Covered in prayer shawls, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men pray during the holiday of Sukkot, as one worshipper holds an etrog at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem’s Old City, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2014. According to Jewish tradition, Jews are commanded to bind together a palm frond, or “lulav,” with two other branches, along with an “etrog,” a lemon-like citrus fruit, that make up the “four species” used in holiday rituals. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

The alarming success ISIS has had in conquering territory in the Iraq and Syria coupled with our current inability to confront or hold them back is deeply troubling.

Early this year, many of us watched in horror as ISIS carried out acts of unspeakable evil and posted them to Facebook and other social media sites. Many of us asked why the United States government was silent when it came to this horrific group. We were alarmed when State Department statements and briefing papers made no mention of this threat.

While Israel was fighting a war against Hamas early in the summer the Obama administration and the rest of the “civilized” world were busy condemning Israel for excessive force, while they were silent about the barbarism of ISIS.

President Obama now wants us to believe that while those of us with a Facebook account were aware of what ISIS was doing, the U.S. intelligence community was not. It seems to me that there is more to it then that: This was a case of willful ignorance and that ignorance continues to this day.

This article is not meant to be an attack on the president of the United States, and neither am I a partisan, but this administration has made some critical errors that has led directly to the frightening situation we currently find ourselves in. Worst of all, however, it is unaware that is it is making these mistakes and thus continues to make them. To be clear, the logic that leaving the Iraqis to their own devices will force them to defend their country against radicals like ISIS is flawed.

Here is why: Subservient societies do not easily transition to become autonomous. Freedom is not just a state of being, it is a state of mind. One can be physically free yet mentally enslaved. One cannot just take societies that have been enslaved to a dictator for centuries and give them democracy in the belief that freedom will reign and that the newly liberated society will put their lives on the line to defend their liberties.

The Biblical story of liberation is instructive here. According to the Biblical account it took 10 miraculous plagues and the splitting of a sea for the Israelites to be freed from Egyptian slavery. But that was not the end of the saga. The Israelites then spent 40 years in the desert before the transition from slaves to free people was complete.

It is paradoxical ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is using the same terror practices against Christians which the Christians used against Jews and Muslims five centuries earlier. Convert or die or leave, enforced with unimaginable brutality.

Shortly after the advent of Islam in the seventh century, the Moors captured and controlled an area which is now southern Spain.

Muslims, Arabs, Berbers, and Jews more or less peacefully coexisted with each other for six centuries while remaining at odds with the Catholics in neighboring territories.

Under a unified military alliance with the Catholic Church, Spanish and French royalty pushed the Moors out of Iberia, culminating with the fall of Granada in 1492. Prior to Grenada’s demise, a series of discriminatory laws had been enacted by Spanish monarchs discriminating against Jews and Muslims. The Inquisition, or “The Edict of Expulsion,” was put into effect the same year, giving Jews and Muslims the option of converting to Catholicism or leaving Spain.

Many Jews and most Muslims who did not convert went to safe havens in the Ottoman Empire, primarily along the North African coast, but also to Turkey and places now considered the Middle East — places where other Jews had lived in peace for centuries. Although Jews were an underclass in the Ottoman Empire, they were never threatened because of their religion, and many families thrived in what became modern-day Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

A protester raises a placard reading ‘What if it was your children?’ during a demonstration against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, in Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday, July 31, 2014. With or without a cease-fire, Israel’s prime minister says his country’s military will destroy the Hamas tunnel network in the Gaza Strip. The vow came as Israel called up another 16,000 reservists to pursue the ground campaign in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu says he won’t agree to any cease-fire proposal that doesn’t let Israel complete the mission of destroying the tunnels. (AP Photo/TT/Fredrik Persson) SWEDEN OUT

My title is borrowed directly from a still-important book by philosopher George Grant who, already in 1965, lamented the disappearance of his beloved Canada into the American empire.

I use the title today, as the war on Gaza rages, to refer especially to Israel, but also to the whole of Palestine which it dominates.

By Palestine I mean the land from the Jordan to the sea, as it was before Zionism dreamed its vision and began its colonization. I mean the entire land which Israel now controls, through occupation and settlement in the West Bank and by the ghetto-ization of Gaza.

In a previous essay for Hark (“Palestine: Four steps Americans can take toward a just peace,” I began by recommending “Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland,” by Pamela J. Olson. Let me begin here by noting another important book: “My Promised Land” (2013) by Israeli journalist Ari Shavit. For it, too, is a lament, subtitled, “The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.”

Shavit’s book is compelling because it enables the reader to enter the heart as well as the head of the many Israelis who wish nothing more than peace, but must face forces leading to war without end. He helped me to better understand the complex humanity of my Jewish sisters and brothers in Israel — just as Olson’s book had helped me to similar compassion for Palestinians.

I will not here be reviewing the book, though I highly recommend it. Rather I will use what I learned from it, along with the devastating news coming again from Gaza, to shape my lament. For Shavit gives voice both to Israeli pride and to a pervasive sense of foreboding.

Why lament? Because one must be offended by all the deliberate lies.

It was Aeschylus who told us that truth is war’s first casualty. And we get little truth from Israel’s current leaders, perhaps especially Mr. Netanyahu. Too little truth from Obama and other politicians with their carefully couched support for Israel and not-so-subtle blame for Hamas. And from the “experts” (often paid propagandists) we read and see in our media. Just as we would undoubtedly be offended by lies from Hamas leaders should we be able to hear the details of their claims in clear English.

Shavit, I believe, tells no deliberate lies and tries mightily to face difficult truth. I often found his proud nationalism exaggerated. Yet it helped me understand the fierce and sacral loyalty of Israelis – even very secular people like Shavit himself.

It also helped me to imagine and feel the same fierce and sacral loyalty among Palestinians. So I admire his careful effort to tell the story of his promised land in its now messy and frightened entirety.

I also lament many pious pleas for peace – even from great spirits such as Pope Francis. Though the best plea I’ve heard came from Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as he stood beside Mr. Netanyahu: “My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting, start talking and take on the root causes of the conflict so we are not back to the same situation in another six months or a year.”

Why do I lament such pleas? Isn’t that just a self-indulgent way of avoiding real suffering and terrible dying? In part, perhaps. Yet what I recoil most from is their “diplomatic” refusal to speak frankly, to name the full and very hard truth.

A protester gestures and shouts slogans during a demonstration against Israel’s bombing of Gaza on Istiklal avenue in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 17, 2014. Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed four children on July 17, medics said, after a humanitarian lull in a 10-day conflict that has killed 237 Palestinians. AFP PHOTO / OZAN KOSEOZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images

Make no mistake about it Israel is in the midst of a war for its very survival. Hamas has invested in acquiring more advanced rockets to fire indiscriminately as Israeli civilians and to create a network of tunnels through which they seek to sneak into Israel to kill and capture thousands of innocent Jews.

Throughout this latest round of the conflict well-meaning people have called for Israel to end its fight against Hamas. Most in the West don’t realize that Hamas is a fanatical religious organization whose raison d’etre is to have armed conflict with Israel leading to the destruction of the state of Israel. In fact the very idea of a ceasefire with Hamas is nonsensical because Hamas has only one goal, to destroy Israel. They see this as a religious obligation from God.

Some thought that once Hamas controlled its own territory it would be forced to start acting responsibly and would accept Israel. This has now definitively been proven wrong. Hamas has run Gaza for seven years. Instead of improving the lives of their population, they have spent huge sums on rockets and underground tunnels meant to kills Jews.

With a fanatical religious organization that believes God forbids compromise and that they are divinely mandated to destroy Israel, there is but one choice. Israel needs to completely destroy their capability to act out their evil mission. For Israel, it is truly do or die.

Thirty five hundred years ago as our ancestors, the ancient Israelites, prepared to enter into the Land of Israel, Moses warns: “If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those of whom you leave will become pins in your eyes and thorns in your sides and they will harass you on the land upon which you dwell,” (Numbers, 33:55).

Relatives of Palestinian Tamer Sammour, 22, mourns during his funeral in the West Bank village of Deir al-Gsoun near Tulkarem town on Friday, Aug. 1, 2014. Sammour was shot and killed during clashes with Israeli troops near Tulkarem, following a protest against the war in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

The generation of Israelites who lived through and looked back on the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem itself in 587 B.C. drew very close to despair.

Superpower Babylon dictated all terms. There was no respect for “local traditions.” And a portion of the populace even submitted to slavery in Babylon. No wonder so many sat by the waters of Babylon, weeping and longing for better times.

Does our God no longer honor the chosen-ness of Jerusalem, its king, temple, city? Israel feels loss rather than the well-being promised, vulnerable rather than the political sense of guarantee, and abandonment rather than a sense of being exceptional.

The folks are either “left behind” in an impotent, denuded city or deported — slaves stuck in a foreign land. This was the new context for faith: emotional, political and theological free fall with no discernible bottom. Like our anxiety and despair after 9/11, it affected every part of common life. Israel dared to go deep into that despair; I’m not sure the U.S. ever has. The saving element for ancient Israel is that despair was kept in engaged conversation, which finally produced the antidote to despair, a resilient, surprising hope.

With People Near Despair, The Prophets’ Burden: Buoyant Hope

With the people’s sense of self destroyed along with the temple and city, with people sold into slavery, what is the prophet’s task? Improbably, inexplicably, the words of the prophets are full of hope in a buoyant future, because that’s just how this God IS. At zero hour, when all is lost, we hear phrases like “you will mount up like eagles,” that God’s arm is stretched out and not shortened, that a new history is possible amid the city in shambles, not restrained by the force of empire.

God’s good news is coming, WAIT for it! Prophets of testaments old and new proclaim a new city, new covenant, new temple, almost outside the bounds of human imagining. “A newly nursing mother might forget her baby (unthinkable), before I will forget you,” God says.
A new minority of followers arises, not everybody, but people start to imagine something other than empire. My questions for you: Can you name imperial images today? Can you name images that refuse empire?

Hope comes from the prophets in a torrent of promises. Jesus uses similar language to describe what he sees, what he names the “Reign of God.” All the parables, most of his deeds point to the “Reign of God,” what I define as “where God’s way holds sway.” Only seen by some, only lived by some, but all are welcome. Brueggemann sees that “not unlike the society of ancient Jerusalem after the destruction and displacement, contemporary U.S. society is at the brink of despair.”

(FILES) — A file picture taken on February 22, 2009 shows a Palestinian flag flying atop a destroyed house as a Palestinian boy walks through a tent camp, housing people who lost their homes during Israel’s 22-day operation, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. The number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has topped 50 million for the first time since World War II, with Syrians hardest hit, the UN refugee agency (UNCHR) said on June 20, 2014, in an annual report released on World Refugee Day. AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMSMAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

I met my wife in Detroit. No, not when we first met 42 years ago, but just last week. She was there as a delegate to the most recent (June 14-21) General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA).

During the meeting she had argued, lobbied, prayed, and finally voted for “On Supporting Middle East Peacemaking,” which recommended the church implement several peace-building efforts, including divestment from three corporations (Motorola, Caterpillar, and Hewlett-Packard) that supply military equipment used in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

It was a “historic” vote, but not, as the opposition claimed, an “anti-Israel” vote. Actually, it was a pro-Israel vote. And pro-peace with justice. One that correctly sees that there will be no peace for Israel as long as Netanyahu and his gang continue the folly of its occupation of Palestine. And also continue to encourage the fanatical settlers — the folks who want to occupy all of “ancient Israel,” even though they have only an ideological image of “glory days” under King David. (I had a distinguished professor of ancient Hebrew archaeology who described David as just a “tribal warlord.” He actually said he was “a king of gangsters.”)

But back to the Presbyterians. It took the pro-peace and pro-divestment folks 10 slow years of work to get to this vote. But they kept at it in the face of immense opposition from the U.S. Jewish establishment’s blindly uncritical pro-Israeli lobby.

The Presbyterians voted for a carefully crafted initiative to divest only from U.S. corporations that supply weapons used by the Israeli military’s occupation forces – weapons largely paid for by U.S. foreign aid.

Yet “the lobby” claimed that the vote would damage Israel’s security and end good relations between U.S. Christians and their Jewish neighbors. In fact, it is the occupation — the wall, the constant imprisonments and killings, the checkpoints and the arrogance of the Israeli kids drafted to be enforcers, and all the rest of the ongoing ethnic-cleansing program – that really endangers Israel’s security and has led to tensions between some Christians and some Jews.

Members of the Los Angeles Clippers listen to the national anthem before Game 4 of an opening-round NBA basketball playoff series against the Golden State Warriors on Sunday, April 27, 2014, in Oakland, Calif. The Clippers chose not to speak publicly about owner Donald Sterling. Instead, they made a silent protest. The players wore their red Clippers’ warmup shirts inside out to hide the team’s logo. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Dear Mr. Sterling:

I read and heard the nasty, vile racist comments that were allegedly spoken by you to your mistress. Despite you changing your name from the Jewish-sounding Tokowitz to the more Anglo-Saxon-sounding Sterling, it turns out that you were born to Jewish parents and are thus Jewish. It is therefore as a rabbi and fellow Jew that I write you this letter.

Frankly, Mr. Sterling, the fact that an educated person can talk this way is as mind boggling as it is disturbing. If this is in fact your voice in the tape, make no mistake about it, you are a simple bigot.

I would, however, like to assure you that the Jewish religion sees no difference between black or white Jews. In fact, our Torah mandates us to treat all people with the same level of love and respect no matter what the color of their skin is. Our Torah teaches us that all humans were created in the image of the Divine. It is the bigotry in the recordings attributed to you, Mr. Sterling, that brings degradation to the Divine image. Furthermore, I would like to bring to your attention the fact that the law mentioned more times than any other in the Torah is the obligation to treat the “stranger” with equal respect and dignity to how one treats one’s own kind.

Furthermore, the suggestion, contained in the recording, that society somehow sees black people as being lesser than white people is deeply offensive. While the people you keep company with might feel this way, I assure you that most of society does not share those bigoted beliefs and views. The people I spend time with do not see a difference, not do they judge others, based on the color of skin. If that is you in the recording (and it seems that it is), it is offensive in the extreme to suggest that society at large is in your image.

But it does not stop there, in the recording attributed to you, you allegedly malign the people I am most proud to be associated with, Jews, and a country I love and care about deeply, Israel. The fact that one can mischaracterize Israeli society as treating black Jews “like dogs” is stunning. While it is deeply regrettable that there are some racists in Israel who share your nauseatingly repugnant sentiments, most Israelis are certainly not racist and I am pleased to inform you that black and white Jews in Israel are given equal opportunities and treated with equal respect by the society as a whole.

Is it not ironic, Mr. Sterling, that you were embarrassed of your Jewish-sounding last name and now the tables are turned, and we Jews are embarrassed of you.

It is my hope that this will lead to some real soul searching on your part so that you recognize that the problem is not with society but within you. I pray that you are able to fully repent for the deep offense that you have caused to the society around you, the African American community and to the Jewish people both here in the U.S. and in Israel. Meanwhile, I am left with no choice but to call upon my fellow Jews and Jewish establishments to condemn you and your vile comments. I hope we will hear a chores of voices doing so.

In anticipation of a full and sincere apology,

Rabbi Levi Brackman

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A general view of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Psagot near Ramallah, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. The Palestinians’ “extreme and reckless” rejection of an Israeli suggestion that some Jewish settlers remain in a future Palestinian state proves that they don’t want peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday. The harshly worded statement follows a flurry of back-and-forth condemnations sparked by an Associated Press report that Netanyahu believes all Jewish settlers should have the right to remain in their homes in a future Palestine. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

I have always spoken about “Israel/Palestine.” A new book has caused me to change that rhetorical strategy. Yes, I still want a just peace between Israel and Palestine. But I’m convinced now that the focus must be on the Palestinian people – making them, rather than Israel, the center of learning and awareness. So this essay is about four steps toward a just peace.

Step 1: The Book.

I strongly recommend “Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland” by Pamela J. Olson (Seal Press, 2013). The title is misleading, but the subtitle tells it all. In 2003, Olson took what she thought would be a typical “finding oneself” backpacking trip through the Middle East after graduating from Stanford. By accident she found herself spending time in a small farming village in the northern West Bank (Palestine). Soon she was back for a two-year stay, working for a non-violent political party created as a secular, corruption-free alternative to Hamas and Fatah.

I’ve read a fair amount about the history and recent conflict in Palestine. I’m no expert, but I try to stay informed. For some years I’ve realized that, while there is much blame on both sides, Israel is, in fact, today’s Goliath, supported by the American-Jewish establishment’s Israel Lobby and by U.S. foreign policy, especially by disastrous amounts (reportedly $3 billion a year) of military aid.

This one book didn’t change my mind. Nor do I think anyone should read only one book or about only one side of the present conflict. Still, this book would be a very good place to start. I don’t intend to summarize the book. Let me instead turn to someone who really is an expert, international affairs scholar Richard Falk.

Here are his opening and closing comments about this “indispensable book” on Palestine/Israel:

“I realize that, without knowing it, I have long waited for this book, although I could not have imagined its lyric magic in advance of reading. It is a triumph of what I would call ‘intelligent innocence,’ the great benefits of a clear mind, an open and warm heart, and a trustworthy moral compass that draws sharp lines between good and evil while remaining ever sensitive to the contradictory vagaries of lives and geographic destinies … .”

I have the following daydream: If everyone in America could just sit down quietly and read this book, there would be such an upsurge of outrage and empathy that the climate of opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict would finally change for the better … . At the very least, as many people as possible should read the book, and if your reaction is similar to mine, give a copy to friends and encourage them to spread the word.

Olson’s book really is a love story – born of compassion for the sufferings and oppression of the Palestinian people, which she presents in shocking but believable detail, even as she acknowledges and, at times details, the suffering of many Israelis. But the love story is born far more from her growing respect and admiration for Palestinians whom she and we meet in the course of her sojourn.

The first step, then, is really not just this book, though, again, it’s a good place to start. It’s rather a step into the kind of reading, listening, and learning which goes beyond the Israeli-focused narrative that dominates our media and political discussion. A step which opens mind and heart to the other side, the repressed underside of the present conflict.

Mary, Makayla Morrison, holds baby Jesus in the manager as Saint Anthony Catholic School students perform “Little Baby in a Manger,” during the school’s presentation of “The Mystery of Simon Shepherd,” Thursday, Dec. 12, 2013.

The buying and selling of Christmas can get old — have you stumbled on Zombie Santa? — but when I see a family driving home with a tree tied to the top of the car, my heart melts every time.

Blessed Days, friends, and they’ve been that way for a long time. As farmer-poet Wendell Berry writes, “The whole shooting match is holy. Things aren’t sacred or not sacred, they are sacred or desecrated. Wherever we abuse the land or allow oppression of people is desecration of a sacred place.”

I find really hearing the Christmas story helps me keep it holy.

For instance, do you know there’s no mention of three kings in the Gospels? Three gifts, yes, but not how many strangely dressed dudes bear them. Much of what we think is the Christmas story, what pageants impress on us, is a melange or composite from our childhood.

Iranian Jewish men wearing Tallit, read from the Torah during morning prayers at Youssef Abad synagogue in Tehran on September 30, 2013 (Getty Images).

Physicist Baruch Sterman is obsessed with string theory — of the religious kind.

Specifically, Sterman has spent decades unraveling the mysterious source of an elusive color known as biblical blue, or tekhelet.

Tekhelet colored the special threads woven into tsitsit, the knotted pure wool fringes worn by observant Jews on their tallits, or prayer shawls.

The brilliant deep color, evocative of sapphire, was found in rare and precious dyes made from Mediterranean snails. The dyes were sought by kings and princes of the ancient world eager to own robes in this gorgeous hue and in another imperial shade, “Tyrian Purple.”

Observant Jews wore the blue color and it was mentioned throughout the Torah. Then the dyeing process was lost in 683 C.E. after Arab conquest in the region. The process stayed lost — the color vanished — for 1,300 years.

People could only wonder at what “biblical blue” looked like.

Sterman was one of those wondering. While he was wondering he received a doctorate in physics and master’s in electrical engineering. He developed a carbon dioxide laser used in both medical and industrial applications. He became an entrepreneur and executive in high-tech fields (and is currently the vice president of technology for Vonage, an innovative telecommunications company).

But his passion was chasing tekhelet — the deepest blue of the sky, the deepest blue of the ocean. To chase tekhelet, one must chase marine snails, Murex trunculus.

“It was something I fell into completely by accident,” Sterman told The Denver Post. “A friend of mine was working with a rabbi looking for scuba divers. I”d taken it as a gym course in college. I was up for an adventure. Then it became a hobby. Then it became an obsession. Now, it’s foundational in my life.”

Where is your moral compass pointing? What are your social values? Hark will explore faith, morals, ethics and character at the intersection of religion ethics, culture, politics, media, science, education, economics and philosophy. At times this blog will alert readers to breaking news and trends. At times it will attempt to look more deeply into intriguing subjects. Hark means to listen attentively, and we will, as readers talk back to the news.